Polanski clarifies ‘bum’ deal for carers comment

A clip is going around of Zack Polanski on Question Time which people have criticised. As I’ll get into, I actually agree with a lot of the criticisms. At the same time, the right-wingers who hate migrants are clearly being opportunistic:

This is an amazing clip from Zack Polanski on last night's Question Time.

"1 in 5 care workers are foreign nationals. I don't know about you, but I don't particularly want to wipe someone's bum."

This is a standard progressive view of migrants: they are a slave underclass who… pic.twitter.com/LchA6EB8Y1

— Carl Benjamin 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 (@Sargon_of_Akkad) December 5, 2025

Polanski — a bum deal for migrants

In the video above, Polanski said:

1 in 5 care workers are foreign nationals. Now I don’t know about you, but I don’t particularly want to wipe someone’s bum. And I’m very grateful for the people who do this work – this really important work – whether it’s in the care sector, or whether it’s in the NHS.

So right now there are three broad stances on migration, which I’ll summarise as follows:

• The Right-Wing Position: Reduce migration to as close to zero as possible.
• The Centrist / Neoliberal Position: Maintain migration at whatever level is needed to ensure a steady supply of low wage workers and to act as a counterweight to falling birth rates.
• The Left-Wing Position: Support people’s right to come here, but also support global equalisation measures so that people don’t feel like they need to come here to experience a tolerable life.

The above positions don’t map neatly onto every individual, and stances have changed over time. Labour and the Tories, for example, followed the Neoliberal Position for the past few decades, but both have moved rightwards in recent years.

The reason people are criticising Polanski from the left is because the above comment — in isolation — makes it sound like he holds the Neoliberal Position. This is why he’s getting criticism like this:

This is an uncommon L from Polanski, while he rightly points out after that care workers are important, the initial line reinforces the Right's narrative that people coming to fill a vital gap in our workforce are 2nd class citizens here only to do the work we don't want to do https://t.co/JECpFGXItF

— Night Thrasher (LC) | Reading Rogue Squadron 🟢 (@thrasher_night) December 6, 2025

Leftists back migrant rights because everyone is equal. We don’t treat migrants as a labour class for the jobs we won’t do. A system that forces them into the toughest, lowest-paid work while politicians boast they’re “too good” for it isn’t solidarity, it’s the problem. https://t.co/0FVIWpwR03

— Jade (@JadeEckhaus) December 5, 2025

It’s a problem for Polanski to come across like this, because he started off as a Liberal Democrat. If the broader left gets the sense that he’s still a Liberal Democrat — i.e. a neoliberal centrist — they will turn on him. It’s understandable too, given that the UK’s current prime minister presented himself as left-leaning only to pivot right as soon as he got power.

Polanski himself clarified his stance in response to Wes Streeting:

Second time a Labour minister misrepresents me today.

Of course this isn't all being a care worker is and I would never want to imply that it is.

But it is a part of it – and I repeat what I said: I'm really grateful to people who do this vital work wherever they're from. https://t.co/O2dMOOneBy

— Zack Polanski (@ZackPolanski) December 5, 2025

Ultimately, I think Polanski’s ‘bum’ comment was an example of poor framing rather than an indicator that he’s a true neoliberal. While Polanski does certainly make the case that the UK is reliant on migration for economic reasons, he also talks about ‘compassion’ and the ‘moral case’:

"We should have a much more compassionate, inclusive and celebratory approach to migration."

Huge pleasure to champion the@MigrationMuseum. 🌎 pic.twitter.com/4VkOOssArO

— Zack Polanski (@ZackPolanski) November 11, 2024

Listening in to Labour on Politics Live – an obsession with "we must bring down net migration."

No sense of the benefits of migration in our country & no case made at all for collective humanity.

Now they've moved on to talking about "benefit scroungers."

So grim.

— Zack Polanski (@ZackPolanski) September 24, 2024

As people have highlighted, he’s also been supporting migrant carers for some time:

Yeah like it's fine to criticise poor communication but people are out here claiming he's a grifter who thinks care workers are beneath him when he was doing this stuff before he became a even remotely well known figure

— NJ (@NoJusticeMTG) December 5, 2025

Politically, I understand why it makes sense to talk about the economic case for migration, as voters in post-Thatcher Britain are conditioned to consider their own interests first and foremost. There’s an art to doing that, though, and Polanski’s Question Time comments were applied with finger paint. At the same time, it’s not for nothing that people are focussing on the bum comment rather than everything else he said:

This was Zia Yusuf's face when a teacher said he was worried about being deported under a Reform government because his ancestors fled and emigrated after WW2.

And yet today… Labour spent their entire annual marketing budget on videos about Zack Polanski.

We're cooked. pic.twitter.com/0CIo6nsndb

— Bold Politics (@_BoldPolitics) December 5, 2025

👏 @ZackPolanski is bang on – Thatcher didn’t just destroy industry, she destroyed society.

Farage is the direct product of that Petri dish: a politics of unicorn 🦄 promises, manufactured grievance and permanent betrayal.

Forty years later we’re still living in the wreckage. pic.twitter.com/GnxH4OAYov

— Liz Webster (@LizWebsterSBF) December 5, 2025

oh they are DEFINITELY Rattled.
the word has gone out from McSweeny no doubt.
'here is an attack line, all post it please.'

we see you. https://t.co/JxFu2Bp5qi

— From The River To The Sea 🇵🇸🇸🇾🇱🇧🇸🇩 (@Anonymoosh) December 5, 2025

Oh, and there’s also this observation:

Zack's ability to shift the Overton Window is unmatched.

Last night on Questiontime, he spoke passionately in defence for migrant workers, and now we've got a wave of right-wingers being very vocal in support for migrant workers 🤷‍♂️

Remarkable.

— Joe Belcher (@_joebelcher) December 5, 2025

I don’t think Polanski was playing 4D chess, but some of his opponents have clearly forgotten what game they’re playing.

Featured image via Barold